Bid-Challenge campaign rules
Overall Concepts No restrictions on Force Org, normal Matched Play and Battleforged rules, bring whatever you want in legal detachments, subject to any special rules for the specific scenario being played All armies start at 800 pts in Chapter 1, going up by 200 pts every other chapter. As a group we should calibrate and refine these numbers. Each Chapter lasts Two Weeks No 1-CP phase command-rerolls, because that makes each dice roll more exciting and meaningful No named characters, Except: At the start of chapter one, each player either generates a 6-perk special character like we do, or nominates two named characters from their faction(s) that they will thereafter have access to. Repeat that choice & process at the start of chapter three Named characters cannot appear on the tabletop in chapter 1, for narrative reasons. Worlds Each Owned World has a determined scenario (or small set of scenarios, for more variety) that goes with defending it. I just picked some defaults, but we can change or add any that sound fun, or make up our own Similar set of World Types and benefits for the defender as from Grand Crusade: Starting Worlds Each player chooses the worlds they want to start with, totaling 5 VP (Say, a Fortress and a Hive). You cannot start with more than one of any type of World. If you take two or more 1 VP worlds, you get an extra 1 VP world for free (Say, a Forge, a Mining, an Agri, and a Death, which then allows you to take an extra Feral). Bids (How you Defend) In the first three days of each Chapter, each player MUST BID a World they control, and pick a mission from it's possible set, unless all of that player's controlled Worlds are already bid. If a player fails to make a bid in the correct time, they auto-bid their worst world (lowest on the table above) with the default scenario. Once a bid has been made, it remains available until it is challenged, including across chapters. A world can only be part of one bid at a time, so if nobody is challenging your bids, eventually all your worlds will likely have outstanding bids. You can issue additional Bids for Worlds you control at ANY TIME, '''limited only by the condition that a world can only be part of a single bid during any given chapter: So you cannot bid a world that you successfully defended in this chapter, and you cannot bid a world that you conquered with a Challenge this chapter. Metagame hint: In case it's not clear, the rule above allowing you to issue extra bids at any time is pretty much the main way to get ahead of the game, in terms of VP and Action Tokens. If you issue a defend bid and someone challenges it, you will either get an additional VP (if you win) or an additional Action Token (if you lose). But of course, every defend bid risks your losing the bid world, so Worlds sort of become the currency that you gamble in order to get VP and Action Tokens (which are easily convertible to VP). How matches can be arranged or forfeited First person to Challenge (see below) by answering the issuer of a bid on some "game matching" channel or wiki page gets to play that game, and the two players arrange a time to play together before the end of the chapter, or in the first week of the next chapter (but results are part of the chapter in which the challenge was made) Any bid challenged or match arranged, may be declined and forfeited by either player anytime beforehand, effectively resigning the game before any scenario rolls, but doing so costs the resigning player 1 VP, attacker and defender then both get benefits as normal. How to Handle Players Traveling Out of Town or Falling into the Warp If someone goes out of town, or otherwise becomes totally unable or unwilling to play games, they/we can set their army into Sleep mode, in which it issues no challenges, spends it's free Action Token to Explore once per chapter, and automatically bids it's worst worlds and forfeits the matches once challenged. To determine who gets to challenge the Sleep Mode Players, right to challenge starts with whoever hasn't won a match in the most days. Action Tokens At the start of each chapter, each player gains one action token. Action Tokens (and VP) are tracked for each player, and persist through the chapters of the campaign until they are spent. Action Tokens can be spent on four things: # ''Explore'' to gain a World without fighting # ''Convert'' and upgrade one of your Worlds # ''Destroy exterminatus an enemy-type converted World you have conquered # Challenge '''another player's Bid to Defend one of their Worlds Exploring (How you gain Worlds without fighting) At most once per Chapter, each player may spend one action token to Explore When a player Explores they get to roll 2d6 and acquire a World of the rolled type according to the Explore Roll column in the Worlds section above. They get no VP when they acquire the newly explored world, but in the current or any future round they can offer a bid to defend the newly explored world, or they can convert it in a future round. Converting your Worlds At most once per Chapter, each player may spend one action token to Convert When a player Converts, they choose any World they control and that World changes it's type to a special type corresponding to their faction. This can be a World that was conquered in the current chapter, but cannot be one that was Explored for in the current chapter. It also CANNOT be a World that is part of any current Bid. Converting a World in this way earns the player 1 VP. Chaos players convert Worlds to type "Daemon", Imperium players to type "Crusade", Ork players to type "Ork", and Genestealer Cults to type "Cult". And so on as needed. Each Eldar faction has a unique type. In terms of defense benefits, all converted worlds are the same. They offer good benefits if the type matches the defender's faction (for example Orks defending an Ork World), and small penalties if you are defending some other faction's converted world (mismatched type, like Chaos defending a Crusade World): Destroying a conquered enemy Converted World Any number of times per chapter, if a player controls a converted World that does not match their conversion type, they may spend one action token to Destroy it. This can happen immediately upon conquering the enemy-type converted world, if the conquering player has an action token left. When a player Destroys, they choose a mismatched converted World they control, and subject it to Exterminatus, gaining 1 VP and removing that World from the game. Challenges (How you Attack) Any number of times per Chapter, a player may spend one action token to Challenge a Bid to defend made by another player. When a player Challenges, they choose an available Bid from another player, mark themselves as the Attacker in that Bid on the Campaign Wiki page, and announce their challenge to the defending player whose bid they challenged. The two players then arrange a time and a place to actually play the game, which should (but need not) be during the current chapter. A challenge may also include the intention to spend VP or Action Tokens (neither can go negative) in order to bring more pts and so even up a tough battle (for example when challenging a Bid to defend a Fortress), getting an extra 200 pts for each VP spent and an extra 100 pts for each Action Token spent. No matter how many VP or Action Tokens spent, the attacker's pts can never exceed the defender's by more than 100 pts. VP and Action Tokens spent this way are gone, regardless of outcome. Bid-Challenge Results ''If you win your challenge as the attacker','' you acquire the world the defender bid, and you earn a number of VP determined by the World Type. '''If you lose your challenge as the attacker, you get no VP. If you win your bid as the defender, you get 1 VP. If you lose your bid as the defender, you lose the world you bid to the attacker, but you gain 1 Action Token that can be used immediately according to the rules above. End of Chapter Events To be decided by the collective players, but some ideas: The player with the fewest worlds at the end of a chapter gets a free roll on the Explore table and gains the rolled World. The player with the fewest VP gets two extra Action Tokens at the start of the next chapter, so effectively they get three in the next chapter instead of one. The player with the most worlds must select one of their worlds to sacrifice and lose, cannot be one part of an outstanding bid unless all their worlds have bids. The player with the most VP does not get a free Action Token at the start of the next chapter, and so is motivated to issue more defend bids to get Action Tokens that way. End of Chapter Team Games At the end of any chapter, any players with outstanding bids may each specify that one of their bids is open to team games. Without needing to spend any action tokens, any players may challenge that team-game-bid, until two have done so. If only one player challenges the team bid, then no team game occurs. Once two have done so, any other player may (with the bidding player's permission) opt to aid in the defense of the World. Thus are the teams determined, and a game must be arranged. It would be totally legit for all these actions to be arranged ahead of time, if three or four people begin with the idea they are free on a certain day and want to play a team game that day. It doesn't all need to formally happen in wargame-terms on the wiki as described above. If it's a 2v2 game, only the player who bid the World gets the defensive bonuses. But if they win, both defenders gain 1 VP. If they lose, both defenders gain an Action Token. The defenders cannot betray and turn on each other like the attackers can, as described below. If it's a 2v2 game, only the first attacking player may choose to spend VP and Action Tokens for extra pts, to the usual max of at most 100 pts more than the bidding defender. If the attackers win the 2v2 game, they may either both agree that one of them gets the World and the other gets the VP, or they can decide to BETRAY EACH OTHER AND FIGHT IT OUT: At the start of any battle round, either attacking player may declare that they are no longer part of the same army, after which they may legally target attacks at each other and no longer recieve each other's buffs. If it's a 2v1 game, then in addition to the defensive bonuses from the world, the defending player also gets 3/4 of the current pts level for the campaign (for example, 600 pts if chapter 1 starts at 800) Same rules for attacking players as in the 2v2 battles detailed above. End of Campaign Ideas At the end of the campaign, the player with the most VP plays a Championship match against the player with the most Worlds to determine who is the real winner of the campaign